All this stuff is only Darwinian if you go into your kid’s education assuming that there is only so much “learning” to go around, and you need to grab what you can or else your kid will be shortchanged.
Back in 7th grade, one of my kids (always a strong math student) was put in what had always been “the top” math track in middle school- but the school created a “super top” math track (called something PC) where there were only 3 students. I called the school to ask if my son (who genuinely loved math) could take a crack at this class- and after a week or so of phone tag, the administrators told me that no- he had missed too much already and couldn’t catch up.
So clearly message received- son not a candidate for this super duper math class. I was miffed- more about the run-around and phone tag which seemed like a clear case of foot-dragging, than I was about the math.
Guess what- there is no limit to the amount of math there is in the world. My son STILL loved math in this class, even if he could have accelerated faster, done more, worked harder, etc. I didn’t have the energy or inclination to argue about his math placement and he ended up doing a few summers of CTY with some fantastic (non school related) math classes which did not accelerate him one iota, but definitely fed his enduring love of math.
It is hard not to push if you think your kid is getting short-changed. But since this was my uber-lazy kid- maybe it’s better that he didn’t have to kill himself on the toughest math track back in middle school? or be accelerated in HS (which he was not)? Maybe it’s ok to just love and be good at math without being recognized as the best math student the school has ever produced???
In most areas, parents and kids both need to understand that scheduling post-calculus courses during HS is going to take a fair bit of work. Forms, calling people during school hours, etc. We thought it was going to be fairly easy after DS took Calc BC in 10th grade, because the local CC had evening sections for 4 post-calc courses. However, all but one of those went away when the professors decided they’d rather have a life. All the sections are now during the HS day. He has evening Discrete Math this semester, but after that we will likely need online classes that satisfy the HS’s requirements. We are dealing with this on a semester-by-semester basis.
His two friends who took Calc BC in 9th grade have more challenges finding classes that work. One took Calc I the summer before 9th and found out no one offers Calc II in the fall. Really, it’s not something I recommend to people. I put more barriers in his way for skipping precalculus than the school did.
What has changed in society? I would guess that few of us had parents who helicoptered all that much, and I think that is because there was no perceived need. I grew up in a small farming community with salt of the earth people, so correctly or not, my parents certainly had fewer concerns about moral and physical safety than parents do where I live. We could walk down a street in town at night with no worries, and the idea of “dangerous strangers” was brand new. Here, parents scarcely allow their kids to walk to school in daylight without an adult. Also, there was no internet to trip us up, and drugs like heroin were an inner city problem then, not a suburban problem. There was little incentive for involvement with homework either, since it was manageable except for the occasional big project. I do remember having to make a Native American village once, that my dad helped me with. I also don’t recall my mom and dad being under much stress due to parenting (though I probably wouldn’t have known if they were), unlike the findings in the article about stressed families posted on another thread. Was that because you weren’t expected to have perfect lives and perfect children then?
The issue as I understand it, is not that people are taking AP Calculus when it they aren’t prepared for the course. But that the course is so that students who are prepared, and might actually do well if they took the equivalent college course, but are struggling because they can’t do the amount of work required of them. Most people, teachers included, would have a hard time in an AP Calculus class that required 50 problems a day, no matter how smart they are.
Houston ISD has kids in middle school taking APs. Some of the Hispanic kids are taking Spanish Language tests in 7th or 8th and doing quite well. Some are finishing both language and literature tests by the time they get to high school.
Here, AP Calc was not a problem. It was the excessive projects and requirements for extreme quantities of written work (as in the English literature class that TheGFG mentioned).
Also, to clarify, I did not mean to suggest (if I accidentally seemed to) that if lookingforward’s children were able to get 8 hours of sleep per night, that meant that their school was not rigorous. I just think it means that they did not experience the type of workload that was typical around here, and in TheGFG’s kids’ school. My high school had much less in terms of the workload, but it was more rigorous academically than the high school here. My spouse’s high school had much less in terms of the workload, but it was also more rigorous academically than the high school here, and in most classes, more rigorous than mine.
Ynotgo, I sympathize with your situation. We also found that evening math classes at the university, and even daytime math classes after the high school had let out, had been eliminated, at the point that those became useful to QMP. This made the course selection and transportation issues quite challenging. Some school districts facilitate this better than others. [Sorry to go somewhat off topic, but I thought it was important to acknowledge Ynotgo’s point.]
Back to the main topic of helicoptering: I did not consider driving QMP to the university math classes [while QMP was in high school] to be helicoptering, but some might. Public transportation was not available on a route that included the high school, and taxi service is quite unreliable around here.
A real helicopter might have been an extremely efficient solution to the* high school classes to college classes and back to high school classes all in one day* transportation challenges.
The government is subsidizing poor people having babies they can’t afford.
Econ 101: If you subsidize something, you get more of that something.
As for this “helicopter parent” issue, the only way to solve it is to make a completely g-loaded exam like the Raven’s Progressive Matrices exam the national college-entrance exam and use only that exam for college entrance. It’s impossible to prep for (Though I’d be willing to wager some will try) and completely unbiased.
Cut the BS like GPA (Which only measures how much you sucked up to the teachers), college essays (Lies and fabrication), and fancy extracurricular activities.
Stuyvesant uses only a defacto IQ test for admittance and their student body is the most diverse and accomplished in the entire country.
That’s because it’s so much fun to be in poverty and have lots of children. The .gov just want to make sure everyone has an opportunity to have fun. It’s all about opportunity. That must ring a bell.
Unfortunately for your theory, GPA remains the strongest predictor of college success.
I think it’s time for a link on GPA as the main predictor of “college success.” GPA doesn’t stand alone for top holistic schools, success doesn’t have one narrow definition. And if it were so straightforward, just getting top grades in any hs, with or without rigor, would be prized.
Plus much of the discussion is about GPA vs SAT or ACT.
In our district, the school board has announced it will review its AP class policy, (specifically but not exclusively AP bio,) due to parent and student concerns about a disparity between the students’ final grade in the course versus their grade on the AP exam. The vast majority of kids score a 5 on the exam but only a small percent achieve an A in the course. I was wondering what the trend was in other districts. Are there kids pulling As in APs courses but 3s and 4s on the exam?
@greatwhiteway - my son got an A- in apworld but a 5 on the exam; he got an A in apush but a 4 on the exam. In languages, math, and science, his grades exactly matched his scores.
eta: I believe that this shows my son has some weakness relatively in history, not that there is any issue with the school.
Grades in AP exams at our school do not match up exactly with classroom grades but are usually the same or higher.
It is difficult in my experience to compare AP rigor with college courses. This would depend on the high school, the college, and sometimes even the level of class taught at the college. Even students getting 5’s on AP exams can experience variable amounts of rigor.